The Stark Legacy
by CRebel
Summary: S.H.I.E.L.D. doesn't recruit children - except in the case of a special circumstance. Sierra Stark, daughter of Tony Stark, is a special circumstance. At thirteen, she begins training under Clint Barton, and in doing so enters a world from which there's no turning back.
1. Prologue

**Disclaimer: I own no part of Marvel.**

 **. . . . .**

 **PROLOGUE**

I knew something was wrong the moment I woke up. Maybe what was wrong had woken me up itself – maybe the wreck my life had become during the night sent ripples across the world, and those ripples nudged me out of sleep, out of peace, and into a dark morning that was actually in the middle of a beautiful sunrise. I felt warmth on my face, but a chill down my back.

My arms snapped straight as soon as I was conscious, sending me into a sitting position so fast I became dizzy. For a moment, I chalked the fear clenching me up to a bad dream. But that notion fell away as fast as my blankets did. I'd worked for S.H.I.E.L.D. for three years by this time. I'd had nightmares and I'd seen nightmares. I could tell the difference, feel it. Instincts are an important part of being a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent. The people who don't learn to trust them are the people who die.

Which is why the bad feeling I'd woken up to was pure and simple dread when my feet touched the floor. I went to the window and pulled back the curtain. Like I said, it was a beautiful morning. Golden sunlight was just beginning to trickle across the Barton farm, and the sky was clear and bright, but my hand was shaking when I let go of the curtain. I stepped back, closed my eyes, took a few deep breaths, and told myself that I was, in fact, freaking out from a bad dream I just couldn't remember. My instincts were good, sure, but I was also only sixteen – sixteen-year-olds misinterpret things. _Nobody is ever as wrong as they are when they're teenagers,_ Clint told me once. I've never forgotten that, and I've often wondered how he arrived at that conclusion and whether or not he's right. But I can say now that, on this morning, I wasn't wrong. I shoved my instincts away as best as I could, but they wouldn't leave, not completely. They kept whispering in my head and swirling in my chest as I left the room.

So, actually, I _was_ wrong. I tried to ignore them, my instincts. Stupid of me.

The steps didn't creak when I walked downstairs. The first time Clint brought me to his place, I'd noticed that he, unlike Laura and I, could go up and down the stairs all he wanted, as fast as he wanted, and barely make a sound. I made it my mission to learn to do the same. I finally reached that point this year, just in time for baby Lila's arrival. Cooper had to deal with me tramping up and down after he was born, but now they both got to sleep in, like little kids should be able to. Especially on such lovely, lovely mornings.

The kitchen smelled like breakfast . . . French toast. Laura went out of her way to make hot meals whenever Clint and I were home. French toast was my favorite, and she knew that. But when I got downstairs, she wasn't in the kitchen, and Clint wasn't sitting at the table with a mug of coffee, watching her like she was the first and last woman in the world.

No, they were both in the living room, facing the television, backs to me. I actually looked to Clint before looking to the TV, because that was the habit burned into my being – _look to Clint_. For orders, for advice . . . for assurance.

And that's when I knew I hadn't had a bad dream. For three years, I'd spent more time with Clint than anyone else, and I knew his every stance, how every one of his muscles moved and what each kind of move meant, and on this morning he was wound tighter than I'd seen him in a long time. Maybe ever. What I remember most is that his hands were in fists, and that blew me back, because he never held his hands in fists here.

I moved in. My heart was pounding. My stomach had dropped to floor. I finally paid attention to the TV, where a blonde newscaster was speaking in a solemn voice, the kind all newscasters adopt right before they jump into a story about puppy adoption or a celebrity not wearing underwear.

". . . no word yet on how the search will proceed, but no one can deny that the chances of the billionaire weapons manufacturer being found alive seem, sadly, very slim indeed."

In the upper right corner of the television was a picture of my father. On a red stripe at the bottom of the screen were the words, _**TONY STARK AMBUSHED IN AFGHANISTAN, PRESUMED DEAD**_ _._

I lost my breath. I didn't need it. I'd stopped functioning the way a human should function. My heart had stopped beating, so blood had stopped pumping, so I had frozen completely. The only thing moving inside of me were those words on that red stripe. They spun in my head.

 _PRESUMED DEAD._

"Sierra."

Clint had turned. I'd yet to learn to sneak in or out of a room without his knowledge. This morning was no exception. When he said my name, Laura spun around, too. Her hands dropped. They'd been covering her mouth.

I saw all that out of the corner of my eye. I couldn't look away from the television screen. From the picture of my father. My father, who I hadn't seen in a year. Who knew nothing of the person I had become. Who stared at me through this television screen with the eyes I'd inherited. Eyes that cut into me and caused a pain like I'd never felt before.

 _PRESUMED DEAD._

"Sierra." Clint was next to me. "I just talked to Fury. Every available agent has been deployed for the search." He took hold of both my shoulders, but that blocked the TV, so I pulled away from him.

"Not every agent," I breathed to my father's picture.

And so it began.


	2. Recruitment

_**Don't forget! You and your dad are having dinner at home tonight, 6:00 sharp. Indian takeout ; )**_

That was the text I got from Pepper the evening I met Nick Fury.

The winky face? That was because she knew I loved Indian food. But every other atom of that message? Passive-aggressive notification that I was still under house arrest. And that Pepper had no intention of changing that. Ever.

Oh – and the text as a whole was a (no doubt unintended) reminder that my dad and I had such a screwed-up relationship that it was literally part of his assistant's job to force time into his day for me.

But I didn't have an assistant to shove slots into _my_ schedule.

So I left my phone on my desk and returned to the mirror on the wall. Look at me, look at me. I knew I had too much makeup on – for anyone, not just a thirteen-year-old – but I liked it. I had a real thing for makeup back then. It was a mask everyone expected me to wear, but I could go anywhere and people would know me as _Sierra Stark, Spoiled Brat Heiress,_ yet not actually know my face . . . what my eyes looked like without the thick black lines around them.

Day by day, I grew more and more infamous, but really, I had everybody fooled.

 _Really_ . . . That's what I believed. I didn't know how much some people – too many people – knew. And how significant certain information could be. How critical.

No, no, didn't know that at thirteen. So on this night, in my childhood room, I lifted my chin at my reflection and popped the collar of my leather jacket – because I was just that cool – before smoothing a wrinkle from my tight little shorts. I was beginning to look more like an adult than a child, and God, I knew it. I'd started working out six or so months before this, and I thought I was hot stuff now, with my baby fat gone and some nice, muscular curves really starting to build up. This year was the year I truly learned the power a woman's ass can have – and the tall stiletto boots I wore announced that much to the world.

"Miss."

JARVIS's voice came from everywhere in the room, tinged with the anxiety I'd come to expect over the past two months, ever since my rebellious streak began.

"Please reconsider this," he said. "You have one hour –"

"Before dinner with my father, I'm aware." I pulled up my shirt and jacket and examined my stomach. Flat. Strong.

"And I imagine you intend to be gone well past six o'clock."

"JARVIS, I appreciate the concern, but Dad didn't design you to be my nanny. Hence my deep-seated fear of large Norwegian women . . ."

"But miss . . . after your ordeal –"

"Being kidnapped? JARVIS, please, that is _so_ three weeks ago."

"I just don't think it's wise to recreate the evening your plight began."

"My 'plight'? It wasn't a 'plight.'"

 _It was a horror show._

"It was a Lifetime movie." I slid a hand into my hair and shook the whole dark mess of it around, messing it up that much more, so I could drive the party-girl look home. "An heiress taken by thugs demanding money – it's a tale older than time, and it's been _great_ for the company."

A moment passed with nothing but my bitter adolescent angst hanging between my oldest friend and me. "Your father didn't react to the situation quite as well as you evidently have," JARVIS finally said.

I snorted to prove to him just how much I didn't care about my father's reaction. Almost at the same time, my phone buzzed. I crossed the room to see the name **ZEKE** glowing on the screen, and the message below was simple: _**Here**_.

So I headed for the door. "My father has more important things to worry about than a kidnapped little princess."

"Miss –"

"JARVIS, is anybody standing between me and the front door?"

". . . No, miss."

"Good." I took my purse from a hook on the wall. "Warn me if that changes. And whenever they notice I'm gone, warn me of that, too. I'll have my phone on me all night."

"I could always tell them myself that you're gone, miss."

I laughed. Kind of cruel of me, sure, but – and I can't stress this enough – I was thirteen. "You and I both know there are two people in this world you're programmed to serve without question, JARVIS, and I'm one of them. Right now, you can serve me by keeping your imaginary mouth shut. I'm sure my father has demanded that you inform him if any of my toes seem close to inching out of line, and I imagine this is not a fun moral – technological, whatever – dilemma for you. But whatever you work out in that artificial mind of yours, wait until I'm gone to make a move. After that, tell Dad if it makes you feel better." I zipped up my coat. "I could use a good game of Catch-Me-if-You-Can."

Before he could answer, I was out the door. His voice didn't chase me.

Ever try tiptoeing in stilettos? Not easy.

Even back then, I had it down pat.

. . . . .

Getting over the fence encircling my home wasn't difficult, once you got the hang of the basic technique. When I swung myself over the top and fell the ten-foot distance just to land on my feet, I felt pretty badass, even though landing in those stilettos was like jumping onto spikes. This was before I learned how to _correctly_ fall in high heels.

I straightened my little strips of clothing, surveyed the neighborhood – I knew that place. I knew it would be virtually abandoned that time of day. Half of the occupants would only spend a few months out of the year in Malibu, and the others lived either at the office, the beach, or some version of the Playboy Mansion (or the Mansion itself, if you really wanted the good life) – it all depended on a variety of factors. Like, were the people in question new money or old money? Elderly or young? Arm candy or a breadwinner? I learned as a toddler how to read the rich. It was when my analytical skills first began to blossom. When you're the kid of Tony Stark, you live in a twisted, bureaucratic world of serpents from Day One, and even if your father doesn't seem to care about the politics and going-ons of that world, it helps immensely of _you_ can understand it. That way youcan navigate the waters when you're sick of sailing with Daddy.

As the sun set on this lovely, empty slice of Malibu, I tossed my hair over my shoulder and strode down the sidewalk like I owned it. Hell, I could have. But I had no interest in taking over the neighborhood. I only wanted to get to Zeke and get away, Bonnie-and-Clyde style.

Zeke.

The situation with him at the time was . . . unfortunate. Not so much as it would get, but worse than it had been.

Once upon a time, Ezekiel Stane could roll up to my front door and spend hour upon hour with my dad in the basement, making gears turn, building an engine that could run on pasta sauce, whatever. He did a much better job of being a Stark than I did, and I was much better at being a Stane, a realization that once pushed us into secretly getting DNA tests, courtesy of a reluctant JARVIS (both of us came out of that a little disappointed). But Dad and Zeke's relationship more or less imploded when my father discovered the places Zeke had been taking me. Meaning, the kinds of places where the bouncers knew who we were, knew we were underage, but let us in anyway, because their bosses probably told them to if the chance ever arose. Who wouldn't want Zeke Stane and Sierra Stark inside their clubs, attending exclusive parties, dancing for the cameras? It was damn near worth getting shut down, and anyway, if you were important enough for Zeke and me to show up at your door, you probably knew enough people to never have to worry about such things.

The point is, Zeke now had to park down the street and wait if we wanted to go anywhere. Today, he had told me that he and his newest baby – a blue Ferrari not yet available for the general public – would be waiting four blocks down from the mansion's gate.

Sure enough, I came across the thing, a sapphire in the sun. Yeah, even I knew it was a beautiful car . . . which is good, because if I forget every other car I've ever known, I doubt I'll be able to shake that car from my mind. It a brand on my brain that still makes me sad.

I pulled open the passenger door and slid in. The new-car smell was like coming home. "Get me out of here, and get me out of here fast." I slammed the door.

The locks popped down. "I hope you don't expect me to go above the speed limit."

I jumped – what little girl wouldn't? – and slammed my back against the door, grasping blindly for the handle because my eyes were latched onto the man in the driver's seat. An intimidating-as-hell black man in leather and an eyepatch. A damn _eyepatch_.

I found the handle, but pulling it, shoving against the window – none of that did a thing. "It's locked," the man said in a calm, deep voice. "The windows are tinted . . . Entire car is soundproof, too." He scanned the interior and nodded what almost seemed to be approval. "Your friend Zeke might be a bit paranoid."

If memory serves, I'd dug my phone from my purse by this point. But when my eyes slid over to it – oh, I'll never forget this image – all I saw was a black, dead screen. I pushed a button, then all the other buttons – nothing.

I stopped moving altogether. No – no, my shoulders heaved up and down. That's right. Breathing was the only thing I was still free to do. When you're confined, you start grasping at things like that, whether you realize it or not.

Eventually, I got a handle on my voice. I even sounded pretty steady, albeit quiet. "I've already been kidnapped once. Quite recently. I should warn you – it didn't work out too well for those guys."

"I know. I formed a team that helped locate them – and you. Not that you would know that, Miss Stark. Your father doesn't even know that."

I stared into his good eye. The one was all he needed to give a good glare: It had enough intensity for two eyes, easy. Probably more . . . Definitely more. I grabbed the back of my seat with one hand, the useless door handle with the other, and I tried my best to match the steel in that eye. "Who are you?"

And the man – who was, of course, Nick Fury – said, "I'm a man who wants you to save yourself from yourself, Miss Stark. And maybe see you turn into a hero along the way."


	3. Collision

Clint first took me to his place a year after S.H.I.E.L.D. recruited me. How and why is a story for another time. But even when I – early on, for a variety of reasons – avoided spending time there, Clint urged me, cajoled me, coerced me back. In spite of my initial resistance, the farm became home. Laura became family, as did the kids, when they came. It wasn't really something I could fight. My job puts me in the thick of a cold world, and the only home I had before the farm – Malibu – could be devastatingly complicated and cruel. And astoundingly lonely. The farm was warm, peaceful, simple, and never, never lonely. You put a person someplace like that enough times, they'll start to crave it when they're gone. Or at least I did.

Standing in that house, with the smell of French toast and coffee filling the air, the prime concern of two people who loved me, I should have been exactly where I needed to be to deal with what was, at that point, the worst day of my life. Which life, though? At the moment, I had two, and they were banging together and trying to claim the same day as its own tragedy. But Tony Stark belonged to Sierra Stark, an elusive wild-child heiress who had been lined up to be crowned Queen of the Tabloids right before being spirited away to boarding school and falling off the social scene's map three years ago. But now Tony Stark was in Sierra Casper's safe space. Casper wasn't an heiress. She was a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent recruited as a child under highly classified circumstances and trained outside of the Academy on a very individualized basis to become a multi- and highly-skilled spy and assassin with more skill than most agents a decade older than she. She had also promised a little boy she would bake cookies with him that day. And now Tony Stark, even in death, was complicating _everything_ for Sierra Casper. Because when you peeled away the badass, she was only Sierra Stark fleeing from her problems.

In my defense, I had done an astounding job. Then the old man had to go and get attacked in Afghanistan and show up on the news in this house, where he didn't belong. Where I was doing just fine without him. It was so very like him. And so very like me to turn from Clint and Laura and bolt up the stairs, which is what I did. If I had a plan, an organized plan, I can't remember it now. And my memory's damn good, so my guess is that I was so shell-shocked by the fact that I was probably an orphan that I wasn't thinking about any steps that came _next_ , just whichever step I was taking at each given moment, and they were essentially the steps of a drunk.

Clint called after me, of course, and came after me. He was on my heels when I swung into my room. "Hey," he said as I headed for the closet. I found my grab-and-go bag and reemerged without answering him. "Sierra," he said, firm, serious, but still gentle.

"Clint." I dropped my bag and returned to the closet, grabbed a tank top and some jeans. I tossed them on the bed and looked at him. "Can I have some privacy? Really probably shouldn't wear my pajamas to HQ. I could probably get away with the shirt, but the pants? Plaid is so not in this season."

"Hey, take a breath."

"No. I don't want to take a breath. I want to go find my dad. Or what's left of him – The _idiot!_ What was he doing in Afghanistan?"

"Weapons demonstration. He had Colonel Rhodes with him."

"Rhodey?"

"He's fine. He wasn't in the same detail as your dad."

"So he not only let him go to Afghanistan, he let him out of his sight."

"Tony's an adult."

"No he isn't!"

"Well, neither are you. Hey." He takes my shoulders like he did downstairs. He doesn't let me shrug him off this time. "I need you to calm down and talk this through with me. Then we'll do whatever we need to do, okay?"

"What I need to do is go find my father."

"Sweetheart, you're not going anywhere like this."

Now I knock his arms away. "So you're just going to trap me here when we _both_ could be out there looking for my dad? You're just going to waste our time, waste our resources? He could be alive, still! He _could_ be!" I whipped my head around and considered the window, but even if I dived out through the glass like a true-blue action hero, Clint would have caught me quick.

"Yeah, he could be –"

"You can'tkeep me from looking for my father, Clint!"

"Agent Casper," he said, in his best government official voice, and my spine straightened without my consent. My breathing evened out. I clenched my jaw. He'd played his ace. Cheater.

Clint Barton was my mentor for all things life-related. He was my friend . . . In some ways my best friend. But at this point in my story, I'm sixteen, and he'd been in charge of me for three years, training me _mercilessly_ and bringing me with him on life-and/or-death missions on kind of a regular basis. And of all the things Clint had burned into my brain in those three years, one lesson was the foundation of all others: His orders were law. Stronger than law.

I hated him, hated him, _hated_ him for pulling that shit right then. But like I said – I went still.

"You need to pause and think for two seconds," he said.

I did. All I saw was my dad's face and the term _PRESUMED DEAD_ , written just like that, in all caps and whatnot. Written _loudly_.

"Can I un-pause now?" I said.

"You wanna know a secret?"

"Dying to hear it."

"Every time you're about to lose your cool, you nearly break the little finger on your left hand."

I glanced down, and wouldn't you know it, my thumb was pinning my pinky against my palm like the little bastard was the one responsible for Dad's disappearance. I released it.

"You've always done that," Clint said, sounding less like Agent Barton and more like the Clint who would call me _sweetheart_. "I should have pointed it out, but it was helpful before I got to know you well. And it's been helpful since you learned to lie like a spy."

"Scared I'd fool you otherwise, Clint?"

"I trust you too much for that."

A few moments passed, and then I finally started to cry. Clint pulled me to him and held me. I let him. I cried into his chest like a five-year-old. Clint's a very good man.

And then a small voice said, "Wha's wrong?"

I broke off the hug. I wiped my face, turned from the door, which was open, allowing little Cooper to peer in on smart, strong Sierra as she had a breakdown.

"Don't worry about it, Coop, we're taking care of it," Clint said. "Go downstairs. Mommy made breakfast."

But Cooper's persistent. "You okay, Serra?"

"Coop, go downstairs, please," said Clint.

I took a good breath, deep enough that I could let it pour out fast and make my voice sound reasonably smooth. "I'm okay, Cooper. Go eat, okay?"

". . . You come."

"Cooper," said Clint, "Sierra and I need to talk alone. Go eat breakfast. Now, please."

The kid finally gave in. Listening to him toddle down the hall, I sniffed and said, "You never say 'please' to me."

"Sierra," he said. " _Please_ try to relax andlisten to what Fury and I want you to do."

"Fury," I muttered. "You and Fury were in contact, talking about what I should do about my father's life, before I was even conscious."

"Talking about how to _save_ your father's life and how much of a role you should play."

"Fine, Clint," I said to the window. "Let's hear it."

"First off, we go to New York and meet with Fury."

I spun around to face him. "I was just going to do that. You stopped me."

"You were doing it out of impulse. Not because it's the thing to do."

"So my instincts were right." I wiped my face again. "That's a good thing. Score one for instincts. Sierra takes home the gold. The crowd goes wild."

"Finished?"

"Yeah, let's go."

"There's more."

"What?"

"No matter what happens, you don't go to Afghanistan. You can stay in New York, you can come back here, you can go to Malibu. But not Afghanistan."

I stared at him. He didn't blink.

"You want me to sit on my hands while my father is MIA."

"Anything you can do from base, do it. But I don't want you in the field on this one."

"It's a scavenger hunt, Clint. It can't be as dangerous as half the stuff I've done since I joined S.H.I.E.L.D."

"It's not guns and bad guys I'm worried about."

"Thought you trusted me?"

"I do."

My mind zipped through all the possibilities, waiting for something to click, and then –

"You don't want me to be the one to find him. If he's dead. You don't want me to be there."

"I don't think he's dead, Sierra."

For a blessed second, a warm rush of relief, or maybe hope, poured through me, because I believed him. It wasn't that I didn't think Clint could get away with lying to me. It was that Clint didn't lie to me. He just didn't.

"I think it's much more likely that he's being held for ransom," he said, and the warm feeling froze over. "According to Fury, no one's made contact with any of your father's people about a payment, but the fact that we haven't found a body and the fact that he's one of the richest men on the planet leaves some room for hope."

Hope. Yes. That good warm feeling should still have been there, because a kidnapping is better than a murder. Far less final. I shook my head once. "What does that have to do with me being on a search team?" Another click. "Oh. You think I'll want to give in to their demands."

"If you were part of the field effort to find him, there's a chance – slim, but there – that you might end up having to make calls a family member shouldn't have to make. No one wins in that situation."

I stayed quiet.

"There's also the chance you'd be recognized."

"I haven't been in the public eye in years. You remember how much of a bitch it was dodging the press when I went back to be emancipated."

"There's still a chance. Hostiles figure out who you are, they could have two hostages instead of one."

"That scenario implies that I would let myself be captured."

"That scenario implies that you weren't able to help it."

"I'm the Poltergeist, Clint," I said. "I don't get captured."

Even then, he couldn't help but roll his eyes. "You're not infallible, Sierra."

" _You're_ not infallible," I grumbled.

"You're sixteen. I know they look alike to you, but they're extremely different."

"Can we go now?"

"Look at your left hand."

I had pinned down my little finger again. I released it as Clint stepped closer. "Sierra, I promise you. If he's alive, we'll find him."

Again, I believed him. My dad was an important man, to the world – in spite of the hatred so much of it felt for him, or maybe because of it – and to S.H.I.E.L.D. We'd find him if he was alive, and he and I could reunite, and go out and gorge ourselves on late-night waffles like the good old days, and then . . . what? Revert back to estrangement? I don't know. But whatever it was, it would be preferable to him being dead. And preferable to the not knowing.

If I had my way, I'd be in the field. But haunting HQ until we had answers was the next best thing.

Eventually, of course, I'd have neither. But there would be other stuff on my mind at that point.


End file.
